Bizav Basics

“While the preowned business aircraft market continues to show improvements, all indicators have been slow to recover in the first nine months of 2011,” according to the latest report from industry research firm JetNet.

Looking for a generous and unusual gift to give this holiday season? CitationAir has introduced an abbreviated version of its jet card that is good for five hours of flying on any of its business jets, including the Cessna CJ3, XLS, Sovereign and Citation X. The cost, including taxes and fees, starts at $31,145 (for time on a CJ3). The offer expires Dec.

You can get it at the coffee shop, on your smartphone, even in coach on an airliner. So why is it so difficult to get Wi-Fi on the jet you charter? One reason is that most chartered aircraft still lack broadband access.

As the PC half of a mixed marriage, I usually don't pay attention to Apple products. So I was nonplussed to find myself harrumphing along with so many others after the debut of the iPad in April of last year. "Doesn't do anything any other tablet can't do," I thought.

The latest hot asset among the world's billionaire elite, according to a recent story on Yahoo! News, isn't the newest or biggest private jet. It's a submarine. The news service reported that Microsoft magnate Paul Allen, film director James Cameron and Russian oil billionaire Roman Abramovich are among the 100 or so owners of private submarines plying the seven seas.

There are probably as many reasons to fly privately as there are private flyers. But you can subdivide the species into types, to a degree. Of course, the characteristics may overlap, but here are three examples:

Charter brokers are sometimes treated like the Rodney Dangerfields of the business aviation world. They don’t get the respect typically accorded to the operators they work with–the companies that control or own the aircraft you use when you charter a flight.

Not long ago, the idea of selling fractional shares in business jets looked like a winner. Industry pioneer NetJets-which Warren Buffett had acquired for Berkshire Hathaway in 1998-appeared prosperous, and so did the several other companies that had formed to take advantage of the business model.

Last july and august, nascar internet discussion boards swirled and smoked like a winning car churning victory donuts after a race. Jack Roush had just wrecked his jet (N6JR)-his second serious crash flying "little" airplanes. The auto-racing legend and founder of Roush Fenway Racing walked away from this one-staggered, actually-bloodied, blinded in one eye and with several cracked bones.